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THE 



Passion Play at Oberammergau 



THE 



PASSION PLAY 



OBERAMMERGAU 



CANON FARRAR; - 



AUTHORIZED EDITION 






NEW YORK 
JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

142 to 150 Worth Street 



W-^MX 



W3Z35 



Copyright, 1890, 

BY 

John W. Lovell Company. 



PREFACE. 



When I visited Oberammergau to see the 
final rehearsal of the Passion Play on May 18, 
1890, I had no intention of publishing in this 
form any record of my impressions. But on 
my return home I found that the interest in the 
subject was so widespread, that I accepted a re- 
quest from the Editor of the Manchester Gtcar- 
dian to write some account of what I had seen. 
I am so constantly questioned on the subject, 
that I have here printed what I had to say in a 
more permanent form. 

In 1880 two friends of mine were so deeply 
moved by the doubt whether it was right to 
witness a play which represented the Lord Jesus 
Christ, that even when they arrived at Etta], 
within three miles of Oberammergau, they were 
on the point of turning back, and yielding to the 
sense of misgiving which had haunted them 
throughout their journey to the place. There 



4 Preface. 

are not a few English men and women, of earnest 
and reverent minds, who denounce the play as 
blasphemous, and regard it as a sin to witness it. 
I have endeavored to indicate the reasons why 
such an opinion is harsh and insular. Of course, 
if vulgar-minded persons go to the play as a mere 
idle show, carrying with them only the vulgarest 
manners and the vulgarest motives, they turn the 
whole scene into a profanation ; but they carry 
the profanation with themselves. The actors, 
the population of Oberammergau, and the simple 
peasant spectators, for whom, and for whom alone, 
the play was originally intended, regard them- 
selves as taking part in an act of devotion, and 
their sobs and tears show the depths of their sin- 
cerity. Many of them kneel down and pray on 
entering the theatre as they do when they go to 
worship in a church. The religious teachers, who 
have for more than two and a half centuries given 
their warmest sanction to the Play, have simply 
been actuated by the principle expressed by 
Horace : 

Segnius irritant animos demissa per durem, 
Quam quae sint oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quae 
Ipse sibi te adit spectator. 



Preface. 5 

That principle is as old as Herodotus, who says 
that " Men's ears are less trustworthy than their 
eyes," 1 and it was enshrined in the Greek proverb, 
" Sight is more faithful than hearing." Luther 
had opportunities to observe the effect of Miracle 
Plays, and he said " that such spectacles often do 
more good and produce more impression than 
sermons." 

The remarks of Pastor Daisenberger, in a 
sermon preached on Whit Sunday, 1870, in the 
church at Oberammergau, are so complete a vin- 
dication of the play from all suggestions of sordid 
motives, and so strong a statement of its sacred 
character, that I cannot do better than reproduce 
them. He said, with touching dignity and sin- 
cerity : 2 

" Dear Friends, — You are called upon this 
year to fulfil a great and holy vow ; you will, as 
it were, in some measure, take part in the Apos- 
tolic office. From the day of Pentecost the 
Apostles went into all lands to preach Jesus the 
Crucified — His doctrines and His deeds, His life 

1 Herod, i., 8. 

2 The sermon is reported in a lecture on the Play by 
Mr. A. Tower Robinson, of Berwick-on-Tweed. 



6 Preface. 

and 1 1 is death, His resurrection and His glorifi- 
cation — to show to men how ancient prophecies, 
how the types of the Old Testament, were fulfilled 
in Him. We are not now to go forth into the 
world to make known the Crucified, but thou- 
sands during this year will come to us, and ours 
will be the privilege to represent before them 
what the Apostles preached. If we work to- 
gether with holy zeal worthily to represent these 
mysteries, then we may hope that, with God's 
grace, great blessings may ensue. Many pious 
Christians, touched by the representation of their 
Saviour's death, will return home edified and 
strengthened in their faith and love, and with re- 
newed resolutions to continue His faithful dis- 
ciples. Many of the lukewarm and frivolous, 
unable to throw off the solemn impressions they 
have received, will in future show that the seeds 
of a more Christian life were sown here. And it 
may be that the sight of the Redeemer's great 
love for mankind, and of His bitter sufferings for 
their sins, may draw tears of repentance from the 
eyes of sinners, and these tears, aided by God's 
good spirit, may be the beginning of a sincere 
conversion, and this gazing on the Passion may 



Preface. 7 

be the way by which the Good Shepherd seeks 
and finds His lost sheep. But, dear friends, we 
can only hope for God's blessing if we undertake 
our work with pure motives and holy zeal, and 
not with selfish and vainglorious motives. If 
with the latter, God will look down upon us and 
upon our work with displeasure ; we shall be mis- 
using and dishonoring the most sacred things, 
we shall reap to ourselves, instead of honor, 
blame, instead of gain, most bitter loss. 

" It is not our aim to shine in the art of acting, 
that would be presumptous and ridiculous in 
simple country people ; but it must be the 
earnest desire of each one to try and represent 
worthily this most holy mystery. Each one who 
takes the least part in this work is a necessary 
link in the great chain ; let him therefore en- 
deavor to fulfil his task to the best of his ability, 
and thus contribute to the success of the whole." 
Then, after addressing each class of performers 
upon their own peculiar work, the preacher adds : 
— " But as the Apostles taught men not only by 
word, but also by their holy conversation, so must 
we endeavor, if our work is to be blessed to the 
hearts of men, to show, by our Christ-like, moral 



8 Preface. 

conduct, not merely before the public, but in our 
private life, the salutary effect produced on our 
souls bv the consideration of the atoning death 
of our Lord. Let nothing go on either within 
or without the theatre, in the streets, in your 
houses, or in the church, which can give occasion 
of offence. The eyes of many strangers will be 
fixed, not only on our Play, but on ourselves. 
Let us so live that we may have nothing to fear 
from the all-searching eye of God, and the scru- 
tinizing gaze of our fellowmen. Let us from 
this time show by increased zeal for our holy re- 
ligion, by our deep reverence for holy things, by 
our greater love for our Redeemer, by our pure 
morals, by our avoidance of sin, and our renewal 
of virtues, that the representation of the Passion 
is not only of spiritual benefit to others, but to 
ourselves as well. Let us pray fervently that 
that Spirit may assist us in the task we have un- 
dertaken. May He ever be with us and in us. 
Amen." 

A second motive which I have had in view in 
writing this paper has been the vindication of the 
people of Qberammergau from the foolish and 
uncharitable attacks to which they have been 



Preface. g 

subjected. I have, for instance, seen in one 
paper the following passage : — " A great many 
who look upon their own Protestant country 
with a sort of horror have visited the Passion 
Play in Bavaria, and have returned wiser and 
sadder men. They had created an ideal peasan- 
try, ideal performers, and ideal Catholics, and 
when they arrived at the scene they found mat- 
ters generally worse than they are at Whitechapel 
or in the New Cut. There is no religion about 
the Passion Play at all, and it is as much a mon- 
etary speculation as is the Pavilion or the 
Aquarium ; while the consumption of beer — es- 
pecially between the acts — is appalling." Such a 
judgment is shockingly false and biased. The 
comparison of the sweet, pure, happy, and deep- 
ly religious population of this Tyrolese village, 
in which I did not hear one evil word, or see one 
unseemly sight, or find the slightest trace of 
drunkenness, with the drunken squalor and blas- 
phemy and vice of our London slums, is an in- 
justice so gross as to call for the strongest repro- 
bation. Nor less calumnious is the frequently- 
repeated charge of greed. The actors and the 
people have repeatedly proved that disinterested- 



i o Preface. 

ness which the world, the flesh, and the devil 
seem determined to break down. Three years 
ago no less than 3000 florins was offered them by 
an Englishman for the music of the play, and 
they at once refused the offer. In 1871 Mayr, 
who has been made the chief butt for their at- 
tacks only received £1$ for the months of strain, 
fatigue, and hindrance of his own means of earn- 
ing a livelihood involved in acting for six months 
his very trying part. If the experience of this 
year should indeed prove that the village is unable 
to resist the evil influences which are rushing 
upon it from the curiosi.y of a sight-seeing world, 
I believe that Mayr and all the best men of the 
village will say, with the Maccabees, Moriamur 
in siniplicitate nostra, and will vote that this year 
shall witness the last public presentation of the 
Passion Play. 

Indeed, it may well be questioned whether the 
suppression of the play has not at last become 
desirable. When it degenerates into a European 
spectacle, criticised in all the newspapers by 
hundreds of reporters as though it were an opera 
in Dresden or Vienna, it becomes, alas ! a fatal 
anachronism. It is killed by an alien atmosphere. 



Preface. 1 1 

It derives its origin from days in which the whole 
attitude of the minds of men in relation to re- 
ligious questions was very different from what 
now it is. To take but one illustration of the 
change. In the Middle Ages, if we had entered 
a Gallery of Art, we should have found that Art 
was almost exclusively the handmaid of Religion ; 
that almost every picture was suggested by sacred 
subjects; and that all the most lovely and im- 
portant were representations of the Infancy, the 
Miracles, or the Sufferings of our Lord. Enter 
the Art Galleries of London this year, and among 
scores or hundreds of landscapes, and portraits, 
and nursery trivialities, and genre subjects gen- 
erally, you will not find five religious pictures of 
the slightest importance. The fact may be due 
partly to a diminution of faith, and an increase 
of worldliness ; but it may be also due in part to 
deeper and better feelings. The artist may feel 
himself oppressed by the awfulnessofthe subjects 
which were so familiar to the mediaeval painters, 
and he may even feel an unconscious revival of 
that adoring reverence which made the painters 
of the Catacombs avoid any but symbolic pre- 
sentations of the Lord of their salvation. I must 



1 2 Preface. 

confess that the tremendous realism of the Cru- 
cifixion — especially the piercing of the side by a 
spear, which, by a mechanical contrivance of the 
spear-head, leaves the semblance of a deep gash 
— seemed to me overwhelmingly oppressive. Up 
to the Crucifixion scene I could watch and listen 
with profit; but from the moment that the Cross 
was raised the imagination was perturbed and 
overwhelmed with the doubt whether this scene 
was not far too majestically sacred for such pre- 
sentation. The Oberammergau play is a beauti- 
ful and touching survival from the religious habits 
and methods of simple and untaught ages. Since 
it was, so to speak, discovered in 1850 by Dean 
Lake and Professor Henry Smith, and made an 
object of interest to English and Americans by 
Dean Stanley, it has been violently transplanted 
into uncongenial conditions, and many would feel 
relieved if the view prevailed that the vow of 
the villagers has now been adequately fulfilled, and 
that the Play may be henceforth reckoned among 
the observances of " the days that are no more." 




THE 



Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

During the next four months English and 
Americans to the number of many thousands 
will be flocking to the lovely village of Oberam- 
mergau to see the famous Passion Play for 
which the village has acquired a world-wide 
reputation. It is not my object to add another 
hand-book to those which have been already 
written. The "Textbuch," which contains not 
only the songs of the chorus but also the entire 
dialogue, may now be purchased at Innsbruck, 
at Munich, and in every street of the village. 
It is accompanied with a full account of the vari- 
ous acts, scenes, and interludes, which is there- 
fore unnecessary for me to describe. I only 
desire to record the impressions made upon my 

own mind by a visit to this sweet and smiling 

13 



14 The Passion Play at Oberamrnergait. 

valley this year, for the purpose of being present 
at the Haitpt probe — or what might be called in 
England "the dress rehearsal" — of the sacred 
play. 

Coming from Verona to Botzen, and from 
Botzen over the Brenner Pass to Innsbruck, and 
thence to Partenkirchen, it was impossible not 
to be struck by the contrast between the Italians 
and the Germans. We arrived at Botzen on 
Ascension Day, May 15, and saw the people at 
their best. They are not a beautiful people like 
the Italians. We do not see among them at 
every turn those perfect, oval, olive-tinted faces, 
with deep-glowing eyes, which have been immor- 
talized in so many pictures of Raphael and Ber- 
nardino Luini ; but we find ourselves in the 
midst of a quiet, devout, manly-looking race, 
actuated, as is evident, by deep religious feeling. 
Mendicancy ceases as we cross the frontier. In 
every town and in almost every street of Italy 
the traveller is assailed by demands for qualche 
cosa } and is assured in pathetic tones, " Ho fame, 
signore." But after crossing the frontier I did 
not meet a single beggar, although one poor 
blind old man sits at the top of the pass at Ettal, 



The Passion Play at Oberannnergau. 15 

and without asking for anything plays a few sad 
strains on an accordion. The devotion and self- 
respect of the people is an element which must 
be taken into account in judging of the Oberam- 
mergau play. 

Nor must it be forgotten that they are Roman 
Catholics, familiarized from infancy with the 
presentation of the Crucifixion before their eyes 
as though it were the sole absorbing fact in the 
work of Christ. Before starting from Botzen, I 
walked over the bridge which spans the rapid 
Eisak, and up the Calvarienberg to the platform 
of a church which commands a fine view of the 
dolomite and porphyry ranges. On every side 
was a wealth of wild flowers ; the air was aro- 
matic under the burning sunshine of the spring 
morning. A nightingale on a " bloomy spray" 
which grew in a crevice of the rock over my 
head was fearlessly pouring forth a tumult of 
song which was answered from another bush by 
its mate. But at every turning of the path amid 
those glad and bright surroundings was one of 
the lt Stations of the Cross." In large, ghastly, 
and horribly realistic figures, our Lord was repre- 
sented in the midst of His judges or execution- 



1 6 The Passion Play at Oberannnergau. 

ers. Their faces are hideous with every expres- 
sion of ferocity and hatred, and He is every- 
where shown in the lowest depths of humiliation, 
with failing limbs, blue lips, and face flecked with 
blood. It might well be questioned whether this 
one-sided aspect of the work of man's redemp- 
tion is not in its essence irreverent and errone- 
ous, and whether it does not involve a threefold 
error — the error of viewing the life of Jesus, not 
only predominantly, but almost exclusively, on the 
one day of His subjection to the hour and power 
of darkness, rather than its divine totality from 
the incarnation to the session at God's right 
hand ; the error of turning men's thoughts habit- 
ually to a Christ dying or dead, rather than to 
Him who is alive forevermore ; and the error of 
identifying life unwisely with scenes of gloom 
and anguish. The Greek view of life was con- 
fessedly too gay and sensuous and godless. But 
at least it realized the truths which Heaven 
meant to be taught by the "pomp and prodigal- 
ity" of earth and sky, and those truths are needed 
to redress the balance of horror which was too 
prominent in many a mediaeval and monastic 
ideal. Again I touch on this point, because it 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 1 7 

must be considered if we are to judge fairly of 
the Oberammergau Passion Play. The step 
from such " Stations of the Cross" — the step, 
for instance, from the plastic realism of the life- 
size figures on the Monte Sacro at Varallo to a 
scenic representation of the same events — is very 
small. The early Christians, as we know, would 
probably have shrunk from a Passion Play as a 
profanation, and their feeling is shared by multi- 
tudes now. But we must remember the vast 
influence of custom in matters of opinion. A 
Latin Cross is now the commonest symbol of 
Christianity, yet in the older Catacombs there is 
no Latin Cross, and perhaps the earliest Latin 
Cross is found on the tomb of the Empress 
Galla Placidia, a. d. 451. For many centuries 
there was no representation of a Dead Christ, 
and for more than three centuries great Fathers 
like Eusebius and Epiphanius considered it pro- 
fane even to paint Christ at all. For eight or 
nine or more centuries the Crucifixion is only 
distantly symbolized, not realistically painted ; 
and it was not till far on in the Middle Ages 
that portable crucifixes wfere commonly known 
or used. In the old sixth century Church of 



1 8 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna there is a 
long series of mosaics representing the life of 
Christ, but a Crucifixion has no place among 
them. The artist passes on at once from the 
Betrayal to the Resurrection and the Ascension. 
On these subjects the influence of monasticism 
has effected an enormous change in the opinions 
and feelings of modern Christianity, and this 
must be recognized by all who would judge im- 
partially of the play at Oberammergau. It can. 
not be understood apart from the age-long beliefs 
and even superstitions of the people. 

This truth was further brought home to my 
mind by another incident. From Innsbruck it 
is necessary to take a carriage and pair to drive 
to Partenkirchen. The drive of nine hours is 
from first to last through country of enchanting 
beauty, and about half way the traveller will stop 
for lunch at the village of Seefeld. If so, let 
him visit the church. There he will be shown a 
" host," or consecrated wafer, stained with blood, 
which the priest will take from its silver shrine 
and will exhibit to him with many genuflections 
and much devotion. He will be assured that it 
is five hundred years old. All those centuries 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 1 9 

an unbelieving Herzog bit the wafer incredu- 
lously. Immediately the host bled, the Duke 
was struck down, and as he fell he clutched at 
the stone altar, on which we are shown the deep 
impression of his hand ! Such are the unshaken 
convictions of the people among whom we move 
in the Bavarian Tyrol. 

Partenkirchen is a village placed in the midst 
of the rich valley of the Iser. Two Englishmen 
have made their home there, Lord Wilton and 
Colonel Ward, who has shown such unwearied 
good nature to so many English travellers. 
" Herr Oberst," as he is usually called, has for 
many years been the generous friend and adviser 
of the peasants of Oberammergau, and he ren- 
ders them effectual assistance amid the difficul- 
ties brought upon them by the rush of curious 
and careless visitors. 

Next morning — on Saturday, May 17 — we 
took on our Innsbruck carriage, with its good- 
humored driver, to Oberammergau. It is a drive 
of about three hours. At first the road lies for 
some miles along the banks of the Iser, and it is 
broidered by marsh-marigolds, gentians, auriculas, 
forget-me-nots, and many other flowers, of which 



20 The Passion Play at Obcrammcrgau. 

some are rare in England. At Oberau the 
traveller may leave his carriage, which will proceed 
by the new road while he walks to the top of the 
pass by the old road, which is much shorter, but so 
steep as to be dangerous for vehicles. It passes 
through a mountain gorge, in which he will have 
the advantage of deep shade, while he hears the 
torrent roaring far below. By the roadside are 
several memorials of deaths by accident. The 
most tragic of these is an obelisk which records 
how on a summer Sunday in 1875 the Munich 
sculptor Braun and his assistant were conveying 
to Oberammergau the colossal marble figure of 
St. John for the monument of the Crucifixion 
erected by the late King of Bavaria, when the 
wagon was overturned by a stone, and the 
statue, falling with a crash, killed the sculptor on 
the spot, and injured his assistant so seriously that 
he died in anguish at Ettal a few hours after- 
wards. At the top of the Ettaler Berg we await- 
ed the carriage, and soon after we came up with 
a long train of forty-six carriages, omnibuses, and 
vehicles of all descriptions, which were conveying 
four hundred people from the neighboring towns 
and villages to see the Passion Play. They were 



The Passion Play at Oberammergati. 2 1 

stopping to refresh themselves by the monastery 
of Ettal, and were a promiscuous body of persons 
of all ranks and all ages — well-dressed ladies and 
gentlemen, tradespeople and artisans. Here and 
everywhere it was impossible for an Englishman 
not to deplore the contrast presented by this 
crowd and the crowds which assemble at places 
of amusement on our Bank Holidays. The 
youths, most of whom had fine, open, honest faces, 
and wore flowers in their hats or at their button- 
holes, were all polite and well behaved. Many of 
them were drinking beer with their lunch, but the 
beer was the thin, wholesome, and perfectly harm- 
less lager beer, on which no one could easily get 
intoxicated. There was no noise, no rowdyism, 
no drunkenness, no coarse language, no bad be- 
havior, but much quiet and courteous happiness. 
Leaving them behind, we descended the pass and 
came in sight of the isolated Kofelspitze, which 
towers over the valley like a guardian spirit. 
The pious villagers have surmounted it with a 
cross, which was outlined against *he sky in blaz- 
ing sunlight. Soon afterwards we were driving 
by the singularly bright and pure waters of the 
Ammer, and in a few moments more we entered 



22 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

the village, with its clean, whitewashed houses. 
The scene is very peaceful. The hills to the 
right are not rocky and snow-clad eminences such 
as those we have left behind us, but are soft 
slopes, clothed to the summit with the exquisitely 
intermingled light green of the larches and dark 
green of the pines, and reminding us of the Buck- 
inghamshire hills about Velvet Lawn or Aston 
Clinton. 

Our destination was the house of Josef Mayr ; 
who this year, for the third time, at the age of 
forty-two, plays the character of Christus, in which 
he first commanded such deep respect and sym- 
pathy as a young man in 1870. The house is 
humble but exquisitely clean, and we occupy 
the best rooms in it, which Colonel Ward has 
procured for us — the same, I believe, which were 
occupied in 1870 by the Duke and Duchess of 
Connaught. At the door we were welcomed by 
Frau Mayr, and by two bright and frank-manner- 
ed daughters; and when Joseph Mayr came out 
to greet us we at once recognized the long dark 
hair and marked earnest features with which 
photographs have made Europe so familiar. I am 
told that in various papers — " religious " papers 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 23 

especially, which are frequently the most unscrupu- 
lous in their malignity — there have been of late 
attacks on Josef Mayr almost brutal in their viru- 
lence. He has been charged with avarice, with 
ambitious self-seeking, with hypocrisy, with the 
abuse of sacred feelings for personal ends, and 
with other odious faults, and these attacks have 
preyed upon his mind so deeply as to injure his 
health. I am glad to give my emphatic testi- 
mony, based on all that I saw of him and all that 
I heard about him from those who had known 
him well for years, that these attacks are as 
shamefully calumnious as those which malice 
loves to invent about any who awaken envy by 
unwilling publicity. I believe Josef Mayr to be 
an entirely devout, sincere, humble-minded man, 
who does not love that fame of the world which 
is always half disfame. He never pretends to be 
more than he is, a simple artisan among his 
brother peasants at his native village ; and he is 
so far from enjoying the attentions of the outer 
world which rushes to his happy valley that he 
will vote for the final discontinuance of the play 
if it becomes tainted with all the worldliness and 
vulgar curiosity which would degrade it to the 



24 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

level of an ordinary European spectacle. The 
visitors of Oberammergau always wish to have an 
interview with Mayr. These intrusions are utter- 
ly distasteful to him, and if he does not repel them 
it is only because of his native courtesy and kind- 
liness. Visitors would be more considerate and 
well-bred if they let him alone. All sorts of 
persons are endeavoring to speculate in tickets 
and to make money out of the adventure. Mayr 
receives but ^50 for his prominent, harassing, and 
fatiguing share in the representation, and he uses 
his best influence to save himself and his village 
from the degrading influences of the world and 
the devil, to which at this time they will be so 
powerfully tempted to yield. 

During the afternoon we wandered about the 
rich meadows of the valley, and up to the marble 
group of the Crucifixion. While we sat on the 
steps, under the fateful statue of St. John, a pil- 
grimage of some fifty peasants — men, women, 
and boys — who had walked more than twenty 
miles along the hot roads from neighboring 
villages, came to the hill-top, and, kneeling devout- 
ly before the colossal figure of Christ, joined in 
alternate voices in fervent repetitions of the Creed, 



The Passion Play at Oberammergait. 25 

the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria and the Gloria 
in Excelsis. We afterwards met this same body 
of pilgrims in the church, humbly engaged in the 
same religious exercises. Again it was impossible 
not to wonder whether many English laborers and 
peasant boys would have been found thus spon- 
taneously — no priest or pastor with them — to 
spend part of a Saturday holiday in joining un- 
ashamed with women to kneel on the grass and 
pray in the sight of all spectators under the open 
sky. 

The village is busy with crowds of people, but 
as the performance is to be the Haupt probe, 
which is not advertised, there are comparatively 
few foreigners present. There are not more than 
a hundred English and Americans, although there 
are nearly six hundred reporters from all countries! 
One sign of the approaching play is seen in the 
long locks of numbers of men and boys ; for four 
hundred or more of the small population take 
some part in the representation or the tableaux, 
or at least appear beim Volk in the scenic crowds. 
A beautiful child, with long fair hair streaming 
over his shoulders from under his green Tyrolese 
hat ornamented with its plume of the black-cock. 



26 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

stops us and offers us a programme for sale. We 
ask him what part he is to sustain to-morrow, and 
with a shy blush he tells us that he is to be tin 
Engel. We buy his programme, and do not tell 
him that he at least will look his part. 

We retire to rest early, but not at once to 
sleep, for bands and processions are moving about 
and vehicles are hourly rolling in. At four in 
the morning a cannon is fired, and by five o'clock 
the church is crowded with multitudes of wor- 
shippers, who include a large part of the popula- 
tion. At six o'clock there is a full choral cele- 
bration of High Mass for all who are to take 
chief part in the play, many of whom partake of 
the Lord's Supper. It must never be forgotten 
that to them the play is meant to be, and is, not 
a theatrical exhibition, but the deeply solemn ful- 
filment of a sacred pledge — zur Erbauung unci 
Betrachtuno mit allerhochster uiid allergnadi?- 
ster Bewilligung aufgefurhi — by which for two 
and a half centuries they and their fathers have 
been bound. 

For everyone knows that in 1633 the whole 
surrounding country was devastated by the rava- 
ges of the plague, and that when eighty-four in- 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 27 

habitants of the little village had been swept away 
in a single month the heart-stricken survivors met 
together and vowed to God that if He would re- 
move the scourge they would every ten years per- 
form a Passion Play with the best skill and the 
deepest devotion in their power. Their vow was 
heard. From that moment not one more victim 
succumbed, and the plague was stayed. For dec- 
ade after decade the simple villagers have con- 
tinued to perform the play, except once or twice 
when war has rendered it impossible. There was 
nothing strange about their vow. Passion Plays 
were universal throughout the Middle Ages. 
They were directly encouraged by the priests, and 
were regarded as a means of educating the peo- 
ple. Unfortunately, however, they were very fre- 
quently mixed up with vulgar, profane, indecent, 
and horrifying incidents, and for this reason they 
fell into grave disrepute, and after the Reformation 
ceased to be acted except in remote villages. To 
this day there are similar plays at Mittelwald and 
other places in the neighboring mountains ; but 
the exceptional survival and fame of the Ober- 
ammergau play is due to its intrinsic, exceptional, 
and progressive merit. The peasants have had 



28 The Passion Play at Oberammergait. 

the good sense and wisdom at each representa- 
tation to strike out everv dubious element. The 
devil, for instance, who played a large part in the 
old representations, has entirely disappeared. The 
temptation of Judas is revealed to us as part of 
his life, and does not need to be interpreted by 
any visible appearance of the Spirit of Evil. 
But how horribly crude were some of the original 
elements of the Mystery is shown in an old copy 
still in the possession of Burgmeister Lang. In 
this copy we see from the stage direction that 
when Judas has hanged himself a swarm of small 
devils rush forward and tear out and devour his 
entrails. Such horrors have long vanished. In 
the play as acted this year there is not a single 
feature which the most refined spectator need 
take the least offence. Two good and able men 
helped to bring about this immense improvement. 
One was Dr. Ottmar Weiss, one of the monks at 
Ettal, and afterwards pastor at Jesewang ; the 
other was Pastor Daisenberger, who for thirty 
years was the devoted friend and beloved teacher 
of his villagers, and who only died in 1882. He 
was the Oberlin, or the Felix Neff, of Oberam- 
mergau, and the progressive improvements of the 



The Passion Play at Oberamrnergau. 29 

play since (after 1830) it ceased to be acted in 
the old churchyard are in large measure due to 
his fostering care. Thus this year for the first 
time there is no attempt visibly to represent the 
Bloody Sweat in the Agony at Gethsemane, and 
the scenes after the Resurrection are advantage- 
ously curtailed. 

Punctually at eight o'clock we were seated in 
the best places of the theatre, exactly opposite to 
the stage, on the front row of those seats which 
arc covered over so as to protect the spectator 
from the glare of sunshine and from the rain or 
snow which has frequently fallen during the ear- 
lier representations in former years. This year 
the stage and scenery are greatly improved, and 
are the work of Karl Lautenschlager, of Munich. 
The streets of Jerusalem are simply but effective- 
ly represented, and on the right of the central 
building (facing the spectator) is the house of 
Annas, on the left the house of Pilate. The 
scenes which here take place are no longer spoilt 
by crowding the personages into two narrow bal- 
conies. The curtain in front represents Isaiah, 
Moses, and Jeremiah ; the upper part of it is 
made to rise, the lower (as in the ancient theatres 



30 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

of Greece and Rome) to fall. On the pediment 
above is a picture of Christ blessing children. 
The drop-curtain, which is drawn aside to show 
the tableaux, is painted with Byzantine-looking 
angels. But an indescribable beauty is given to 
the representation by the fact that the main part 
of the stage is in the open air, and over it we see 
the soft green slopes of the pine-clad hills, while 
birds sing, and the pure sunshine bathes the whole 
scene, and careless of the deepest of human trag- 
edies which is being visibly set before us, the life 
of nature is going on, and the swallows are twit- 
tering and disporting themselves in the blue sky 
over our heads. 

Although this is only the final rehearsal, the 
theatre is filled with four thousand spectators, of 
whom the greater part are peasants from the sur- 
rounding country. All are orderly and expect- 
ant. As the clock strikes eight a cannon is fired, 
the hum of the multitude is hushed, and without 
a moment's delay the Schutzgeister — or protecting 
spirits, who form the chorus — file in from the side 
passages on the right and left. They are twenty- 
four in number — namely, fourteen maidens as an- 
gels and ten men as genii, and they form a large 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau . 31 

semicircle in front of the stage. They are clad, 
both men and women, in ample tunics of soft 
white material, over which they wear mantles 
richly embroidered with gold and arranged in dif- 
ferent but graceful folds by each wearer. These 
mantles are of green, violet, dark blue, light blue, 
orange, brown, red, and crimson ; while that of 
the tall and stately choragus is of glowing scarlet. 
All the choir wear golden crowns, and they not 
only form a beautiful chord of color, but play their 
parts with a wonderful grace and dignity, which 
is partly natural but partly the result of training' 
and tradition. Their function is exactly that of 
the old Greek chorus in the Athenian trilogies. 
They act the part of idealized spectators, to ex- 
plain the force of the tableaux and to point the 
moral and meaning of the entire play. The chor- 
agus, whose voice is beautifully clear, recites in a 
few words the object of the representation, dwel- 
ling earnestly on its sacred character. Then, in 
clear, sweet, powerful voices, the chorus, accom- 
panied by the small and simple orchestra, begin 
the first song, which tells of a man's fall and God's 
plan of redemption. At one point in their song 
they fall back in orderly symmetry along lines 



32 The Passion Play at Obcrammergau. 

marked upon the stage ; and, grouped on either 
side, they point to the tableaux revealed to us by 
the drawing of the curtain. 

The entire music of the Passion Play was writ- 
ten by a former schoolmaster and organist of the 
village, named Rochus Dedler. It is of the sim- 
plest character. It contains none of those infinite- 
ly pathetic movements and crashing outbursts with 
which the genius of Handel has made the world 
familiar, nor has it the marvellously inwoven har- 
monies of the Passion Music of Sebastian Bach. 
Yet it is throughout admirably suited to its pur- 
pose, and is not beyond the adequate rendering 
of a peasant choir, and is often sufficiently mov- 
ing to bring into the eyes of the listener the gra- 
cious dew of tears. Two passages of the music 
may be signalized as specially full of beauty. One 
is the song preceding the condemnation of Christ 
by the Sanhedrim, where the chorus bursts into a 
fervent appeal to God for vengeance : — 

Gott vertilge dieser Frevler Rotte 
Die sich wider Dich em port, 

and then a thrilling child's voice is heard replying 
in nobler accents — 



The Passion Play at Oberamm-ergau. 33 

Aber nein! Er kam nicht zum Verderben 
Von des Vaters Herrlichkeit : 
Alle Sunder sollen durch Ihn erben 
Gnade, Huld, und Seligkeit. 

The other is where the cry of the deluded multi- 
tude — 

Barabbas sei 

Von Banden frei — 

is answered passionately by the chorus — 

Nein ! Jesu sei 
Von Banden frei — 

until they too are compelled to ratify the impre- 
cation, "His blood be on us and on our children." 
It is no slight proof of the educating power of 
this Passion Play that, whereas it is one of its 
conditions that none but natives of the village 
should take part in it, the small population is not 
only able to furnish twelve or fourteen admirable 
actors, and five or six hundred persons, old and 
young, male and female, who can effectively take 
their part in the scenes and tableaux and general 
management, but also twenty-four singers with 
pleasant voices, each of whom takes a solo part 
in turn. Of course the singing is far from per- 
fect, but it may be said without paradox that it 
is better than if it were, for it has nothing artifi- 



34 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

cial in its character. The singers, if their accu- 
racy is not faultless, may at least be listened to 
with pleasure, and they accompany every one of 
their songs with varied and rhythmic gesticula- 
tions — a sort of poetry of motion — which adds 
greatly both to the beauty of the spectacle and 
the effectiveness of the recitative. Each singer is 
left to use such actions as seem most suitable. 
One or two of them are more or less conventional 
in their movements, but there were some who 
seemed to be inspired by the words they were 
singing to accompany them with the most fitting 
gestures, and one man in particular showed a per- 
fect genius in thus seconding and interpreting the 
language which he recited. 

The tableaux — evidently selected by a master 
mind — are meant to show that Veins Testamen- 
turn in Novo patet; Novum Testamentum in Vetere 
latet. They are designed to impress upon the 
spectator the truths that the drama of man's re- 
demption was no isolated fact in the story of 
mankind, but that it had been foreshadowed by 
prophetic analogies from the earliest ages. Let it 
be granted that some of the analogies could hard- 
ly be accepted as such by modern criticism ; yet 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 35 

it must be remembered that the play was written 
in an epoch of Biblical interpretation which was 
indeed prse-scientific in many of its assumptions, 
but which was actuated by the profound convic- 
tion that the minutest incidents in Jewish history 
were intentional prefigurations of events in the 
life of Christ. And (to take but two instances) 
if we can 1 ) longer say that there was any inten- 
tional " type " or prophecy of the traitor kiss of 
Judas in the treacherous salute of Amasaby Joab 
or of the rejection of the Synagogue in the re- 
pudiation of Vashti by Ahasuerus, we may yet 
see in those Old Testament narratives a certain 
analogy which may be harmlessly used for illus- 
tration and edification. 

Of these illustrative tableaux, representing 
scenes of the Old Testament, there are no less 
than twenty-four. They call into requisition the 
services of a multitude of the villagers, so that 
there are sometimes three or four hundred per- 
sons on the stage. They represent such scenes as 
the selling of Joseph by his brethren; the promo- 
tion of Joseph to be ruler in Egypt ; the sacrifice 
of Abraham ; the repudiation of Vashti by King 
Ahasuerus, and the choice of Esther, who is 



36 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

made a type of the chosen Church of Christ ; the 
Bride of the Canticles bewailing the absence of 
her beloved ; the smiting of Micaiah on the 
cheek by the false prophet Zedekiah, son of 
Chenaniah ; the condemnation of innocent 
Naboth ; the misery of Job ; the last triumph of 
Sampson ; the scapegoat ; and one scene from 
the Apocrypha, the setting forth from home of 
the young Tobias on his perilous journey with 
Raphael, " the affable Archangel." There is not 
one of the scenes which is not effectively set forth, 
and it is wonderful to observe how absolutely 
motionless are all the assembled figures during 
the moment or two that each tableau remains 
visible. Whatever mind and taste may have pre- 
sided over these scenes, the grouping of the 
actors and the harmonious blending of the colors 
is a triumph of artless art. Doubtless on the 
great stage of Drury Lane and other theatres an ex- 
perienced stage manager with boundless resources 
of wealth at his command could present some- 
thing infinitely more costly and gorgeous, but the 
beauty of these groups depends mainly on the 
fact that they are not " theatrical," and have not 
lost the spontaneity and simplicity which make 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 37 

them so suitable for their function in carrying out 
the special sacred conception. Never certainly 
on the most splendid of European stages — never 
in London, or Paris, or Dresden, or Rome — have 
I seen tableaux which could be compared for na- 
tive beauty and effectiveness with these, which are 
seen in the light of day, and in which none of 
the stage tricks which heighten the semblance of 
beauty are for a moment permitted. Some of 
them are quite exquisite in their loveliness. Such 
are the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Para- 
dise by the Cherub with the flaming sword, while 
the gleaming folds of the Serpent are wound 
round the Tree of Knowledge of Good and 
Evil. Such, again, are the crowded and wonder- 
ful scenes of the manna gatherers and the uplift- 
ing of the brazen serpent. Most beautiful of all, 
and really touching in their pathos, are the two 
which represent the murder of Abel, and Adam 
and Eve surrounded by their innocent little ones, 
while the father of our race earns his bread by 
the sweat of his brow. 

So long and careful has been the training for 
the play that from first to last there is not a single 
hitch. The prologue and the song of the chorus 






38 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

in each instance explains the coming scene, and 
gives ample time for its preparation, so that all 
is ready when the curtain is withdrawn, and there 
is not one tedious delay. And this becomes all 
the more astonishing when the visitor goes over 
the dressing rooms, as I did. They are nothing 
more than deal partitions, without a single article 
of luxury in them, and not even the most ordi- 
nary furniture. Yet they suffice for the costumes 
of the actors, the chorus, and the multitudes of 
supernumeraries of both sexes and of every age. 
We now come to the central incident of the 
play itself. While the spectators are filing into 
their seats, all who are to take part in the repre- 
sentation, many of whom have been already sol- 
emnized by the Holy Communion, are on their 
knees praying behind the scenes. At the close of 
the prologue, the opening song, and the tableaux 
of the expulsion from Paradise and of a cross 
surrounded by angelic and human worshippers, 
young voices are heard singing, " Eternal One, 
listen to the stammering of thy children who 
worship Thee. Let us now follow the Redeemer 
upon the thorny path until He has fought the 
burning fight and shed His blood for us." Then 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 39 

the shouts of the multitude are heard behind the 
scenes singing " Hail to Thee, hail to Thee, Son 
of David ! " and as the chorus retire by the side 
entrances the whole stage is filled by a moving 
crowd. They represent the Galilean pilgrims and 
inhabitants of Jerusalem, in correct Oriental cos- 
tumes, who, with hosannas and waving palms, are 
heralding the approach of the Divine Prophet of 
Nazareth. There is a deep hush as the figure of 
the Christ enters riding on an ass. Every eye is 
turned towards Him, and the spring sunlight 
streams full over the scene. If it is less character- 
ized by passion and movement than we should 
have expected, this perhaps better attunes the 
minds of the spectators to the sacredness and 
solemnity of what they are about to witness. The 
Christus is dressed in a light grey tunic, over 
which, across the breast and shoulders, is a red 
mantle. He enters in quiet dignity, and alights 
from the ass, on which he has been sitting side- 
ways, and which is quietly led aside ; then, amid 
the prayers, praises, and blessings of the multi- 
tude, he proceeds with infinite majesty to purge 
the Temple of the chaffering throng of traders, 
overthrowing the tables of the money-changers, 



40 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

letting loose the doves from their cages, and 
silencing by the calm grandeur of his authority the 
murmurs and menaces of the merchants and their 
abettors. With one or two strokes of the cords 
with which they have tied up their cattle he drives 
them from the sacred precincts. In the old days 
of the Mysteries there was a certain tumultuous 
and almost comic element in this scene, for the 
mediaeval sight-seer expected to be provided with 
the ludicrous in connection with the pathetic. 
Now it is all done with consummate reverence, 
and there is nothing at which even the most frivo- 
lous spectator could venture even to smile. 

And at this first scene arises the whole mo- 
mentous question, Is it or is it not permissible, 
is it or is not in accordance with the awfulness of 
Christian devotion, that such scenes should be 
represented at all, and that a peasant or any man 
should appear before thousands of spectators in 
the awful guise of the Lord of Life ? I have 
met persons deeply religious who denounced the 
Oberammergau play as a shocking profanity. So 
it might seem to be if it were attempted anew in 
these days ; but of those who see it in its own 
village no one will carry away so wrong an im- 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 4 1 

pression. There we take it amid its true sur- 
roundings. We see that it had its root in the 
deep, unquestioning devotion of the Middle 
Ages, and that the peasants still regard it as a 
work only less sacred than the High Mass at 
which they have all been present in the church 
in the morning before they begin their work. 
They have acted from the first not only with the 
permission but under the immediate sanction and 
supervision of priests whom they venerated and 
loved, and who in former days used themselves 
to represent the principal characters. No mis- 
giving about the holiness of their procedure has 
ever crossed the minds of the peasants in Ober- 
ammergau and other Bavarian villages where 
analogous " mysteries" are still occasionally per- 
formed. On the contrary, it is their wish, and 
the wish of their religious teachers, always to 
choose the youths of the loftiest and most blame- 
less character to play the parts of the most sacred 
personages. The consciousness that they are set 
apart to do so, and that such selection is a reward 
of high character, acts upon the dispositions of 
these young men and women like a controlling 
spell. They feel themselves consecrated for a 



42 The Passion Play at Obcrammergau. 

sacred function. This year Josef Mayr enacts 
the Christus for the third time, and we can see 
at a glance that the responsibility has weighed 
most deeply upon his life and conduct, and has 
had something of an inspiring force. Proposals 
have sometimes been made by worldly specula- 
tors to take the whole Passions-Spiel to great 
cities. The conscience of Christendom might 
well cry out in alarm against the hideous pro- 
fanation of transplanting such a spectacle from 
its true surroundings in the hearts of a simple, 
believing peasantry to pollute it into wicked and 
blasphemous vulgarity by setting it upon the 
boards of some coarse rendezvous of harlots in 
Paris or in London. The Oberammergauers 
might make thousands of pounds by accepting 
such offers. To their honor, they have always 
resisted them, even as it is now their one endea- 
vor to resist the deteriorating influences to which, 
against their own will, they are being so sorely 
subjected. " If they want to remove our play," 
said Josef Mayr, "they must remove with it the 
Kofelspitze and its guarding cross." It is a 
curious circumstance that this year that cross was 
blown down, and has just been renewed. Some 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 43 

of the villagers see in this circumstance an omen 
that the play ought no longer to be continued ; 
and, indeed, it is said that some of them believe 
that they have had a heavenly intimation that 
henceforth they are quit of their olden vow, and 
that with this year the public decennial repetition 
of the play should cease for ever. It may be 
well for them — well for their happiness and for 
their faith — if they come to this decision. If 
that lovely range of meadows under the snowy 
hills, watered by their crystal stream, is to become 
like some idle watering-place — crowded by fash- 
ionable visitors, invaded by smart villas, polluted 
with foul, lying advertisements, and crowded with 
monster hotels — they will have purchased their 
popularity at the terrible cost of all which gives 
to human life its highest dignity and its purest 
sweetness. 

The eminent Eduard Devrient — a high-minded 
man, and one of the finest actors of his genera- 
tion — wrote in 185 1 that "too much could not 
be said about this highly remarkable drama of 
the people, to spread a thorough knowledge and 
just appreciation of its beauty and sublimity." 
It has since then made a deep impression on the 



44 The Passion Play at Oberammergan. 

minds of many great thinkers, among whom we 
may mention the late Deans of Westminster and 
St. Paul's. What w r as written of it by Dean 
Milman in i860, and by Dean Stanley in i860, 
gave the main impulse in England to its enor- 
mous popularity. Up to the year i860 it was 
visited by very few foreigners. 

Two considerations may help to put the spec- 
tator at the right point of view, and save him 
from sweeping and unjust prejudices. One is 
that the play has evidently entered into the in- 
most religious life of the people; so that, as 
Eduard Devrient said, in the dignity, simplicity, 
and sincerity of their bearing, " Man Sicht, die 
Darstellung ist nicht angelernt, sie ist angelebt." 
The other is that they have never had any other 
object than that of vividly setting forth the nar- 
ratives of the Evangelists. The scenes of the 
Gospels have for centuries been represented by 
painting and sculpture ; the words of the gospel 
have been read for centuries in the hearing of the 
people. It never even occurred to the children 
of the "ages of faith" that they were acting 
otherwise than piously when they reproduced in 
living groups the great pictures of the mediaeval 



The Passion Play at Oberammergan. 45 

painters, and emphasised the truth that the words 
of the Gospels were once spoken under the light 
of the earthly sun by human lips to human ears. 
If the devotional feelings may be stimulated by 
the genius of the artist when we stand before a 
picture of Raphael or a statue of Donatello, must 
they be shocked by seeing the same scenes and 
persons reverently presented as part of an act of 
worship ? St. Francis of Assisi sweetest and 
simplest of men, stimulated by the story of the 
Nativity, was the first who ever prepared at 
Christmas time a presepio — one of those repre- 
sentations of the stable and manger of the Nativ- 
ity which may be seen in the Chnrch of the Ara 
Coeli at Rome, and in so many Italian cities. 
He believed that a miracle had sanctioned his 
effort. Vivid presentation has always been an 
instrument of religious teaching among southern 
peoples, and many scenes of ihe Passion Play are 
reproductions of pictures — such for instance, as 
Leonardo da Vinci's " Last Supper," Raphael's 
" Lo Spasimo," and Ruben's "Deposition from 
the Cross." In the play as now presented 
scarcely one word is put into the mouth of Christ 



46 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

which is not taken immediately from His recorded 
utterances. 

The first redactors of the Play had read the 
Gospels with close attention and keen insight. 
They had, for instance, read to the depths the 
worst phases of that worldly sacerdotalism which 
the condemnation of Christ reveals in such lurid 
characters. The Jewish priests and Pharisees 
are rightly exhibited to us as so hypocritical as 
not even to suspect their own hypocrisy. The 
profession of the loftiest motives is constantly on 
their lips. All they do is done, they assert, for 
the honor of God and of their country, and of 
Moses, their great lawgiver. They make their 
constant appeal to the consciences of those whom 
they inveigle and seduce. They look upon them- 
selves as the vindicators of true leligion, and, 
taking the too common priestly view, that wrong 
becomes right in the cause of orthodoxy, it is 
always in the name of Heaven that they do the 
deeds of hell. 

Nor is less psychological insight shown in the 
close and original conception of the character of 
Judas. His final fall is in the play connected 
immediately with disappointment of his greed 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 47 

when Mary of Bethany "wasted the precious 
ointment in anointing the feet of Christ. Judas 
is not represented as the coarse ruffian of the 
mediaeval Mysteries. He is thoroughly human ; 
the words which he applies to Christ, " He was 
such a good man," are unspeakably pathetic, and 
are evidently wrung from his heart. They cor- 
respond to so genuine a conviction as almost to 
shake him in his fell purpose. We pity him all 
along, for he is not represented as wholly and ir- 
redeemably bad, but only as a man who has no 
faith and no enthusiasm, and who being disap- 
pointed in his lofty expectations of earthly ad- 
vantage, and even alarmed lest he should be 
reduced to beggary, has allowed his besetting, sin 
of greed to lay such hold upon him as to render 
him an easy victim to the astute tamperings and 
religious exhortations of the priests and traders 
We not only shudder over him ; we weep for 
him, and we see in his ruin how pitiable and 
irreversible may be the perversion of a soul which 
was by no means destitute of worthy elements. 
Nay, we are even made to feel that Christ would 
have forgiven him as He forgave Peter but for 
his ultimate despair. When we consider the 



48 The Passion Play at Obcrammergau. 

light of revolting and unmitigated odiousness in 
which the Middle Ages usually portrayed him 
" who also became a traitor " — 

That furtive mien, that scowling eye, 
Of hair that red and tufted fell, 

It is — oh, where shall Brandan fly ? — 
The traitor Judas out of hell — 

then we shall see that this play was drawn up by 
no slavish or ordinary mind. The writer could 
see some gleam of hope even in the degradation 
of Judas. Apart from the acting altogether, the 
mere words of the play are deeply worthy of 
study. 

From the characters and structure of the play 
we turn to the actors. It is no small testimony 
to the goodness and gifts of Joseph Mayr that 
in his personation of the Christus he does not 
offend us by a single word or a single gesture. 
If there were in his bearing so much as the faint- 
est touch of affectation or of self-consciousness, 
if there were the slightest lack of concentration 
in his look or the remotest suspicion of a strut 
in his gait, we should be compelled to turn aside 
with disgust. As it is, we forget the artisan alto- 
gether. We see a series of pictures set forth 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 49 

with such humble sincerity of heart that we are 
enabled to realize how, even in the midst of an- 
guish and derision inflicted by the most brutal 
and ruthless of his tormentors, the Divine 
Prophet retained His attributes of awe and domi- 
nated over surging crowds and priests and poten- 
tates by the irresistible might of innocence even 
in the deepest weakness. It is easy to see that 
Josef Mayr utterly forgets himself, and desires 
only to present a picture of what the Gospels tell 
us. His impersonation — it is something much 
higher and more sacred than acting — it is the 
transference into a living picture of what the 
Gospels tell us about One who, alike in the ten- 
derness of love amid His followers and the 
majesty of patient and silent suffering, and even 
in the anguish of humiliation and death, spake as 
never man spake, and presented to the world the 
spectacle of sinless innocence. 

Peter Rendl, who takes the role of St. John, 
and Franz Rutz, who takes that of Annas, and 
Michael Bauer, who appears as Simon of Cy- 
rene, may be mentioned as excellent ; but some 
of the other actors deserve special notice. The 
character of St. Peter is taken now, for the 



50 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

fourth decade, by Jak Helt, who played it as far 
back as i860. It is not a specially prominent 
part, but the scene of Peter's fall and repentance 
is admirably rendered. Helt, like all the other 
actors, preserves the golden rule of ne quidnimis. 
It is no small testimony to them to say that not 
one of them succumbs to the facile temptation 
of over-acting his part. This excellence would 
be unattainable if they were not trained to sup- 
press and forget themselves. It is more than 
doubtful whether the most trained and consum- 
mate actors in Europe would acquit themselves 
as well as these poor wood - carvers. Actors 
would act ; but these men are not acting — they 
are expressing the deepest truths they know. . 

The part of Caiaphas is also taken for the 
fourth time by J. E. Lang. No mediaeval Pope 
could pronounce his speeches with more dignity 
and verve. He is what has been called "that 
terrible creature, a perfect priest," a man who in 
the cause of his personal interests, which he con- 
founds with those of his order and of religion, 
will domineer and intrigue, and commit crimes 
which he gilds with the name of holy expe- 
diency, tempt the human instruments of his will 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 5 1 

to their own ruin, and ruthlessly fling them aside 
the moment that they have served his purpose. 
Caiaphas is subtly discriminated from Annas, 
whose senility is a pale reflection of similar ele- 
ments of disposition, and also from the leading 
priest Nathaniel, who is a coarser and more un- 
scrupulous reproduction of the same evil ten- 
dencies. The impersonation of this bad, un- 
scrupulous priest by Sebastian Lang — a man of 
singularly fine presence — is one of the most' pow- 
erful pieces of mere acting in the play. And 
here there is room for acting, since Nathaniel is 
a purely imaginary personage. We see in him a 
picture of the most repulsive features of priest- 
craft. He is the evil genius, the dme damnde of 
the priestly faction, and it falls to his lot to rouse 
the hatred and suspicion of the mob against 
Christ, as it might have fallen to an Arnold of 
Citeaux to goad the soldiers of De Montfort to 
the unholy crusade against Raymond of Tou- 
louse. 

The voluptuous and frivolous Herod, who is 
quite correctly represented as a blase, worldly 
cynic, is well acted by Johann Diemer, and we 
may well be astonished that working-men who go 



52 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

back straight from the play to their humble peas- 
ant homes and menial duties can enact kings and 
hierarchs with such astonishing propriety and 
force. The very highest praise must be given to 
the Pontius Pilate of Thomas Rendl. His fine 
acting of the part assigned to him — the Roman 
straightforwardness and inbred sense of justice 
which make him at first more than a match for the 
astute sophistries and subterranean machinations 
of the priestly conspirators — is perfectly rendered. 
The scenes in which he takes part bring out very 
vividly the intense reluctance of the Procurator 
to yield to the wicked motives which were trans- 
parent to his judicial insight. In favor of the ac- 
quittal of the Divine sufferer were enlisted alike 
his clear convictions and his superstitious fears. 
Magnificent is the scorn with which he tells the 
priests that he wholly disbelieves in them and the 
sincerity of their motives, and that from them he 
expects neither justice, nor mercy, nor truth. 
Noble is the reluctant emotion with which he 
sentences Christ to be scourged, solely in the 
hope that the spectacle of His silent anguish and 
unearthly majesty may at least move the mob to 
compassion, even if it cannot touch the stony 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 53 

hearts of the priests. Olny after a long struggle 
and in consequence of the terror brought to bear 
on a guilty conscience is he at last constrained to 
give way; and it is with a burst of indignation 
that, after having been forced to pronounce 
sentence, he breaks his staff of office and flings 
down its broken fragments. All these scenes of 
the Trial of Christ constitute a vivid comment, 
and a comment of no ordinary character, on the 
narratives of the Four Evangelists. 

Gregor Lechner was the very remarkable Judas 
of 1 87 1 and 1880. This year, owing to his age, 
he has had assigned to him the insignificant part 
of Simon of Bethany. But, though he only ap- 
pears once for a few moments, even this slight 
role becomes important and interesting in his 
hands. The part of Judas is acted for the first 
time by Johann Zwink, who in 1871 and 1880 
took the character of St. John. He acts with 
great power. The aloofness from the devoted 
spirit of the other Apostles is illustrated from the 
first. He takes no share in their loving demon- 
strations, his sullenness is turned almost into 
savagery by Mary's act of "waste," and in the 
thwarting of all his earthly expectations by the 



54 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

sad prophecies of his Lord he succeeds in sophis- 
ticating his own conscience. Awfully as he shud- 
ders at the word " traitor/' he persuades himself 
into the belief that no one can apply the word to 
him, But " the tempting opportunity meets the 
susceptible disposition," and he becomes the prey 
of the cunning traders and their priestly instiga- 
tors. At the Last Supper Judas sits a little back 
from the others, and watches the scene with terror 
and suspicion. He visibly shrinks and trembles 
at the words of Christ, u One of you shall betray 
Me." In the scene before the Sanhedrim he 
cowers and wavers before the appeal of Nicode- 
mus, yet he cannot resist the fascination of the 
thirty pieces of silver which are counted out to 
him with a chink, and at which he clutches with a 
misers grasp. Finally, the anguish of his awaken- 
ment when the priests taunt their now useless 
victim is very terrible. He hurls the thirty pieces 
of silver at their feet, and rushes out to pour forth 
his mad despair in one heartrending soliloquy, and 
finally to hang himself. This is a presentation 
which no one can witness unmoved, but here, as 
throughout, good taste and the rules of true art 
have triumphed. We seethe ragged, wind-swept 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 55 

tree of the field of blood, and we see Judas 
tear off his girdle, but before the actual suicide 
the curtain falls. 

Many of the scenes of the play have an almost 
harrowing interest but some of them may be 
singled out as specially effective. Among these 
are the conspiracy of the priests in the Sanhedrim, 
a most powerful conception from first to last ; 
the parting of Jesus with his mother, Mary ; the 
Last Supper ; the thrilling protests of Nicodemus 
and Joseph of Arimathea ; the mockery of Christ 
by the soldiers ; the silence before the contempti- 
ble Herod ; the scene before Pilate's judg- 
ment seat ; and the bearing of the Cross to Gol- 
gotha. During some of these scenes there was 
scarcely a face among the four thousand specta- 
tors which was not wet with tears, and, what is 
more remarkable, some of the actors themselves 
were visibly weeping. There was of course no 
attempt at applause, for the audience were mostly 
peasants, who know how utterly unsuitable, and 
how entirely distasteful to the actors, would be 
such manifestations. But when the curtain falls 
on some of the more pathetic scenes there is 
among the people a deep and audible sigh of 



56 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

relief, as though a stone had suddenly been rolled 
awav from their hearts. To this there was but 
one exception. It was after the weird and har- 
rowing soliloquy which ends in the suicide of 
Judas. Strange to record, when the curtain fell 
there was a sort of low audible laugh on all sides. 
It might have been supposed that this marked 
some failure in the actor, or at the best that it was 
a sort of mediaeval reminiscence of the days when 
Judas was made purposely grotesque and in some 
respects comic. I interpret it differently. Shakes- 
pere introduces the coarse porter in the middle of 
the most ghastly scene of " Macbeth " to relieve 
the painful tension of feeling ; and I think that 
the ripple of laughter which ran through the 
audience really spoke to the depth of emotions 
which, after a silence so deep that you might have 
heard a pin drop, required some unwonted vent 
from their unusual strain. 

What are we to say of the last scenes of all ? 
Speaking of my own personal impressions, I can 
only say that they seemed to me too awfully sa- 
cred to be witnessed without misgiving. Every- 
thing, indeed, is done to prepare the minds 
of the spectators. The chorus, laying aside 



The Passion Play at Oberammei^gau. 5 7 

their splendid mantles, appear in black ; the 
song which they sing and the words spoken by 
the choragus are meant to hush every heart into 
the most profound solemnity. But here the 
thing represented was too overpowering and the 
imagination was alarmed. This, however, must 
be said. Even amid the marvellous realism there 
is the most consummate reverence. The great 
minds which worked out the ideal of the play 
rose superior to a morbid extravagance. Even 
amid the brief agony of the Crucifixion they 
never lose sight of the predominent elements of 
hope and joy. The scenes of the Resurrection 
and Ascension — of which the last is only a lovely 
picture reproduced — have been most wisely cur- 
tailed, and I would suggest to the Oberammer- 
gauers that they would be wise also to omit the 
Angel with the cup, and especially the words 
which he speaks in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

But when we proceed to ask, " What is the to- 
tal effect of the play ? " I do not think that any 
unbiased judgment will question that it has been 
up to this time predominently good. It has been 
to these poor but now prosperous peasants the 
very poetry of their lives, of which it has formed 



58 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

a most important part. It has deepened their 
religious character, stimulated their devotion, in- 
creased their knowledge, and marvellously devel- 
oped all their artistic and intellectual gifts. It 
has done this without in the least spoiling the 
simplicity of their characters or making them dis- 
contented with 

Their humble toil and destiny obscure. 

The play lasts from eight o'clock to twelve, and 
then (just as was probably the case in the old 
Greek trilogies) there is a pause for rest and re- 
freshment. During this pause we went back to 
Joseph Mayr's house for lunch, and there the 
bright maiden who waited on us and did the 
work of a servant had just been conspicuous on 
the stage as one of the Schutzgeister, with her 
long fair hair streaming over her shoulders, sing- 
ing solos of sacred words in a sweet and powerful 
voice before that vast audience, and arrayed in a 
crown of gold and a splendid mantle of gold-em- 
broidered blue. Her prominence did not make 
her less of a lady or less of an active servant. A 
young man, with his long dark locks, who had 
been another member of the chorus, was moving 



The Passion Play at Oberammergan. 59 

about in his shirt sleeves and waiting on his 
guests. For four months these poor people are 
the observed of all observers ; a fierce light of 
publicity beats upon them ; they are swept into 
the rushing and restless current of European life ; 
they are criticised in every newspaper and every 
capital in all the languages of civilization ; their 
names will be household words, and their photo- 
graphs will be sold by thousands. To-morrow 
they sink back with perfect contentment to their 
unknown, eneventful peasant life, as hewers of 
wood and drawers of water. No doubt this year 
they will make large sums of money, and money 
has a singularly corrupting power ; but the money 
has to be divided among large numbers, and it 
has hitherto been spent with self-denying gener- 
osity on the improvement of the theatre and its 
properties. The expenses are great. The dres- 
ses alone cost about 14,000 marks, for, as there is 
no artificial light or stage delusion, everything has 
to be of the best, and the dresses are all spoilt 
when the rain falls on the unprotected actors. 
Every effort will doubtless be made to secure the 
repetition of the play in the year 1900, for many 
interests are involved. The hotel proprietors at 



6o The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

Munich told me that there they never had seasons 
comparable to the years in which the Passions- 
schauspiel was acted ; and I expressed to him my 
wonder that a great capital, rich with all the re- 
sources of wealth and art, should be so largely de- 
pendent on the peasants of a little village of two 
hundred houses in the Bavarian Alps. But the 
gravest, the wisest, the most serious of the Ober- 
ammergau villagers feel anxious misgivings about 
the future. They do not love to see their village 
invaded by crowds of curious and careless sight- 
seers. They fear that their characters and the 
character of their home will be injured by the in- 
flux of alien elements ; and they feel that loss of 
religious purity would be ill compensated by any 
amount of increased wealth. Not a few of them 
are half resolved that this decade shall witness the 
last Passion Play. They have an instinctive 
sense that the world has outgrown the need for 
their efforts, and would end in making them un- 
real, vulgar, and profane. This humble flower 
from the Middle Ages has lived on, as it were, in 
the crevice of its native rock ; but it is doubtful 
whether it can long keep its bloom and fra- 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 6 1 

grance in the changed atmosphere and changing 
soil. 

The old order changeth, giving place to new, 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 



THE STORY THAT TRANSFORMED 
THE WORLD. 

Condensed from "The Review of Reviews.'" 

Caspar Schuchler was a humble day laborer 
of Oberammergau, who lived in the reigns of 
our Queen Elizabeth and King James. In old 
days, as far back, it is said, as the twelfth century 
there had been a Passion Play performed in the 
little village, but towards the close of the six- 
teenth century, the wars that wasted Germany 
left but little time even to the dwellers in these 
remote highlands for dramatic representations. 
Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes, good fellows 
no doubt, who were fighting on the right side, 
neverless played dreadful havoc with the homes 
and fortunes of the German folk who were on 
the other side. Among these unfortunates were 
the Bavarians of the Tyrol, and as one of the re- 
mote after-consequences of that wide, wasting 
thirty years' war, a great pestilence broke out 

in the villages surrounding Oberammergau, 

62 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 63 

Whole families were swept off. In one village 
only two married couples were left alive. It was 
a visitation somewhat similar to our Black Death 
While village after village fell a prey to its 
ravages, the people of Oberammergau remained 
untouched, and enforced a vigorous quarantine 
against all the outside world. Their preventive 
measures were for a while successful. But, then, 
as always, the blind instinctive promptings of the 
human heart broke through the most necessary 
sanitary regulations in the person of Caspar 
Schuchler. This good man who was working in 
the plague-stricken village of Esehenlohe, felt an 
uncontrollable desire to return to his wife and 
children who were living in Oberammergau. 
Whether it was that he felt the finger of death 
upon him, and that he wished to see his loved 
ones before he died, or whether he merely wished 
as Housefather to see that they had bread to eat 
and a roof to cover them, history does not re- 
cord. All that it says, is that Caspar Schuchler 
evaded the quarantine and returned to his wife 
and little ones. A terrible retribution followed. 
In two days he was dead, and the plague which 
he had brought with him spread with such fatal 



64 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

haste from house to house, that in thirty-three 
days, eighty-four of the villagers had perished. 
At this moment, Oberammergauers in their 
despair assembled to discuss their desperate 
plight. Unless the plague were stayed there 
would soon not be enough living to bury the 
dead. Sanitary preventive measures had failed. 
Curative measures were utterlv useless. Where 
the plague struck death followed. It was as men 
looking into the hollow eye-sockets of Death that 
the Oberammergauers cried aloud to God. 
They remembered their sins that day. They 
would repent, and in token of their penitence and 
as a sign of gratitude for their deliverance — if 
they were delivered — they would every ten years 
perform the Passion Play. And then, says the 
local chronicle, from that hour the plague was 
stayed. Those who were already smitten of the 
plague recovered, nor did any others fall victims 
to the pestilence. Since Moses lifted up the 
brazen serpent in the wilderness, there had not 
been so signal a deliverance from mortal illness on 
such simple terms. Thus it was that the Passion 
Plav became a fixed institution in Oberammer- 
gau, and has been performed with a few varia- 



The Passion Play at Oberammergaii. 65 

tions, due to wars, — such as that which sum- 
moned the Christ of 1870 to come down from the 
cross to serve in the Bavarian artillery, — ever 
since. The performance of the Passion Play, like 
the angel with the drawn sword which stands on the 
summit of the Castle of San Angelo, is the pious 
recognition of a miraculous interposition for the 
stay of pestilence — a kind of dramatic rainbow 
set in the hills to commemorate the stay of the 
pestilential deluge. But for Caspar Schuchler it 
would have gone the way of all other Passion 
Plays, if, indeed, it had not already perished even 
before his time. His offense saved it from the 
general wreck. He sinned, no doubt, and he 
suffered. He died, and it is probable that his 
own family were the first to perish. But out of 
his sin and of their sorrow has come the Passion 
Play as we have it to-day, the one solitary sur- 
vival of what was at one time a great instrument 
of religious teaching, almost universal throughout 
Europe. Hence I feel grateful to Caspar Schuch- 
ler. 

And after Caspar, who was the guilty cause of 
this unique survival, our gratitude is due chiefly 
to the good parish priest, Daisenberger, to whom 



66 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

more than any other man, is due the conversion 
of the rude mystery or miracle play of the Middle 
Ages into this touching and tragic unfolding of 
the greatest drama in history. For thirty-five 
years he lived and labored in the village, presid- 
ing as a true father in Israel over the mental, 
moral, and spiritual development of his parishion- 
ers. A born dramatist and a pious Christian, he 
saw the opportunity which the performance of- 
fered and he made the most of it. Stripping the 
play of all that was ignoble or farcial — and noth- 
ing is more curious than the way in which all 
miracle plays run to farce ; even at Oberammer- 
gau before Daisenberger's time, the Devil excited 
uproarious hilarity, as he tore open the bowels of 
the unfortunate suicide Judas, and produced 
therefrom strings of sausages — he produced a 
wonderfully faithful dramatic rendering of the 
Gospel story. Thus the Geistlicher Rath became 
the Evangelist of Oberammergau. The play which 
we have been witnessing is the Gospel according 
to St. Daisenberger. His beatification has not been 
declared at Rome, and his version is not entitled 
to rank with the canonical scriptures ; but none 
the less, generations yet to come may lise up to 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 67 

call him blessed, and his version, unauthorized 
though it be, enables all who see it to realize 
more vividly than ever before the human side of 
the Martyrdom of Jesus. 

Oberammergau is a beautiful little village 
standing in a lovely valley almost on the water- 
shed of the Bavarian Alps. A mile or two on 
one side the streams run east toward Munich, but 
here in the village itself the Ammer runs west- 
ward towards the Planer See. Looked at from 
above it forms an ideal picture of an ideal village. 
The clean white walls of the houses with their 
green window shutters are irregularly grouped 
lound the church, which with its mosque-like 
minaret, forms the living centre of the place. It 
is the rallying point of the villagers, who used to 
perform their play in the church-yard — architectu- 
rally as morally the keystone of the arch. Seen 
at sunset or at sunrise the red-tiled and gray- 
slated roofs which rise among the trees on the 
other side of the rapid and crystal Ammer seems 
to nestle together under the shade of the sur- 
rounding hills around the protecting spire of the 
church. High overhead gleams the white cross 



68 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

on the lofty Kofel crag which guards the entrance 
to the valley. 

In the irregular streets Tyrolese mountaineers 
are strolling and laughing in their picturesque 
costume, but at the solemn Angelus hour, when 
the bells swing out their music in the upper air, 
every hat is raised, and bareheaded all remain 
until the bells cease to peal. It is a homely, 
simple, unspoiled village, and that they have been 
unspoiled by the flood from the outer world 
which submerges them every week all summer 
through every ten years is in itself almost as the 
miracle of the burning bush. The student of 
social economies might do worse than spend some 
days observing how life goes with the villagers of 
Oberammergau. They are more like the Swiss 
than Germans. They inhabit the northern fringe 
of the great mass of mountains that divide the 
flatlands of Germany from the plains of Italy, 
and have most of the characters of the mountain- 
eers who, whether they be called Swiss or 
Tyrolese, are one of the most respect- worthy 
species of the human race. Isolation begets in- 
dependence, and the little community, secure 
amidst its rocky ramparts against the i-ntermecU 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 69 

dling despotism of distant governments, develops 
the most simple and the most sound system of 
democratic government. There is a burgo- 
master, but he is elected, and the government is 
vested in the hands of the householders. Nearly 
every man is a landholder — the poorest have 
about three acres, the richest about sixty. But 
over and above that they have the inestimable 
privilege of pasturage on the hills. Talk about 
three acres and a cow ! That ideal has been more 
than realized ever so long ago at Oberammer- 
gau. Never was there such a place for cows. 
Every night and morning a long procession of 
cows, each with her tinkling bell hanging from 
her neck, marches sedately through the principal 
street to and from the milking shed. They wan- 
der on the hills all day, but come home to be 
milked every evening, and the continuous tinkling 
of their bells fills the valley with their delightful 
music. The whole population of Oberammer- 
gau is not more than fourteen hundred ; but they 
own between them five or six hundred cows. 
Few more pleasant sights will you meet in all 
your travels than the coming home of the cows at 
milking-time, The goats also and the horses 



jo The Passion Play at Oberammergau . 

have bells, but the cows so far outnumber all the 
rest that the others pass unnoticed. 

The various wayside shrines that pious souls 
had reared along the public road, wherever acci- 
dent befell a drunken wagoner or carelesss 
woodman, are touching mementoes of the tragic 
incidents in the uneventful annals of the valley. 
Ettal used to be a famous place of pilgrimage be- 
fore its monastery was transformed into a brewery, 
and even now its miraculous Madonna is an 
object of reverence to all the country side. The 
story goes that the image is invisible to the very 
reprobate, is as heavy as lead to the impenitent 
sinner, but as light as a feather to all those who 
are of a contrite heart. It is natural that all the 
roads leading to such a pilgrim hunt should be 
studded with these little shrines. We should be 
none the worse for a few similar memorials in 
this country. 

It is often wet in Oberammergau when the 
sun is shining all around. Of this I had a curious 
experience the day I drove over to the fashion- 
able Bad Anstaltof Messrs. Faller & Buchmuller 
at Kohlgrub. Kohlgrub is but one hour from 
Oberammergau, but it lies much higher. It 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 7 i 

stands on the other side of the hill, and com- 
mands a magnificent prospect over the lakes and 
mountains of the Bavarian Highlands. It is 
famous as one of the most accessible and salubri- 
ous of all the Kur places of Southern Germany. 
The season was just commencing and there were 
therefore few of the hundreds of visitors who in 
a week or two would crowd the roomy and airy 
establishment which Messrs. Faller& Buchmliller 
have built on the famous iron spring of Kohlgrub. 
The air was most invigorating. The blue waters 
of the lakes that lay in the valleys at the foot of 
the old church of St. Martin, the village that 
clambered up the hillside, the dark green woods 
that dotted the mountains, all stood out distinct 
and clear in the brilliant sunshine. But immedi- 
ately after leaving Kohlgrub we drove right into 
a honible falling rain, which had never ceased all 
the afternoon in the valley of Ammer. Hence, 
if it rains in Oberammergau, the visitors may 
never despair. 

He may often find perfect weather within an 
hour's drive. Very quaint and curious is the 
effect produced by the appearance of the actors 
in the Passion Play in their every-day costume. 



72 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

Maier, the Christ, an excellent family man, makes 
his living by carving crucifixes. Lechner, the 
most famous of Judases, lives in this house. 
Over yonder stands the Burgmeister's where, if 
you ask for Caiaphas, you will be told by his 
daughter, the Virgin Mary, that he has just gone 
across to the inn to drink beer with the village 
doctor, that is King Herod driving the Zweispan- 
ner that just passed us; and that long-haired lad, 
who is lighting his cigar in the middle of the 
street, is the Apostle John. I was lodged in 
the house of Herod, and we were waited upon at 
the table by St. John. '• Johannes, Johannes!" 
you could hear from the kitchen, and thither 
Johannes would hasten, bringing back the bottle 
of beer or plates of meats for which hungry guests 
were clamoring. All is so strange and simple. 
As I write, it is now two days after the Passion 
Play. The crowd has departed, the village is 
once more quiet and still. The swallows are 
twittering in the eaves, and blue and cloudless 
sky overarches the amphitheatre of hills. All is 
peace, and the whole dramatic.troupe pursue with 
equanimity the even tenor of their ordinary life. 
Most of the best players are woodcarvers ; the 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 73 

others are peasants or local tradesmen. Their 
royal robes or their rabbinical costumes laid aside 
they go about their ordinary walk in the ordinary 
way as ordinary mortals. But what a revelation 
it is of the mine of latent capacity, musical, dra- 
matic, intellectual, in the human race, that a 
single mountain village can furnish, under capable 
guidance, and with adequate inspiration, such a 
host competent to set forth such a play from its 
tinkers, tailors, ploughmen, bakers and the like ! 
It is not native capacity that is lacking to man- 
kind. It is the guiding brain, the patient love, 
the careful education, and the stimulus and in- 
spiration of a great idea. But given these, every 
village of country yokels from Dorset to Caith- 
ness might develop artists as noble and as devoted 
as those of Oberammergau. 

The theatre in which the Passion Play is per- 
formed is better understood by looking at the 
illustration on a previous page than by any 
verbal description. It stands in a meadow at the 
far end of the village, and from all parts of the 
auditorium you see a background of blue sky and 
fir-crowned hills. Half of the seats are in the 
open air, half under cover. If it rains the per- 



74 The Passion Play at Obcrammergau. 

formance goes on, and half the audience is 
drenched. If the sun blazes the spectators in the 
open air are roasted. But there is no help for it ; 
il rain or shine," the play goes on. Umbrellas 
are not allowed. The seats are all numbered. 
If the weather is at all chilly, rugs are almost in- 
dispensable. In wet weather you shiver on your 
seats, and as you occupy them for four hours at a 
stretch, you have leisure for regretting your 
neglect to bring the necessary wrappings. Even 
with an ample fur rug I felt miserably cold on 
Sunday morning; yet on Monday afternoon in 
the open, I was nearly broiled in the blaze of an 
afternoon sun. Opera-glasses are allowed, and 
are a necessity to all near-sighted persons. Lunch 
baskets are not forbidden. But against photo- 
graphic camera, kodaks, and the like, the regula- 
tions are very severe. Not knowing this, I took 
in a kodak. Caiaphas spied me from the stage, 
and despatched a messenger to forbid its use ; then 
another, to insist upon the confiscation of the 
plates ; and finally, I was at the close of the perfor- 
mance marched off under arrest to the Burgomas- 
ter's office to render an account to his highness of 
my misdeeds. I found Caiaphas in private, or, 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau . 75 

rather, in his local quasi-official capacity, very cour- 
teous and dignified. He explained that they had 
sold the monopoly of photographing the play and 
the performers to three enterprising gentlemen — 
Messrs, Faller, Buchmiiller, and Stockmann, of 
the famous Bad Anstalt, Kohlgrub — and it was, 
therefore, his duty to prevent any other photo- 
graphs being taken. As I had already received 
permission to reproduce their photographs from 
the gentlemen in question, I was released. The 
experience of being brought up before Caiaphas 
was, however, a novel and unexpected pleasure — 
a pleasure enhanced by the opportunity which it 
afforded me of seeing Caiaphas and the Virgin 
off the stage in their everyday dress, and of ex- 
pressing to them the admiration which everyone 
feels who has enjoyed the opportunity of seeing 
their wonderful performance. What would have 
happened to me if I had not had permission, I 
do not know. 

There are some eighty and more photographs 
published by the Kunst und Verlags Anstalt. 
The cabinet sizes, mounted or unmounted, are 
sold at a shilling, the quarto size at half-a-crown. 

The concessionaires, Messrs. Faller, Buchmtil- 



j6 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

ler and Stockmann, have requested me to act as 
their representative in this country for the repro- 
duction of these photographs. Anyone, therefore, 
who wishes to reproduce woodcuts or electros of 
these Passion Play pictures must communicate 
with me. I am informed that the Concession- 
aires contemplate publishing a reproduction of 
the whole series of quarto pictures in an album, 
which will form a valuable memorial of the Pas- 
Play as it was played in 1890. 

The good priest Daisenberger has left on record 
that " I undertook the production of the play for 
the love of my Divine Redeemer, and with only 
one object in view, the edification of the Christian 
world." In order to attain this end he deemed it 
necessary to follow the Scriptural method. In- 
stead of simply setting forth the Gospel story as 
it stands in the New Testament, he took as his 
fundamental idea the connection of the Passion, 
incident by incident, with the types, figures, and 
prophecies of the Old Testament. The whole of 
the Old Testament is thus made as it were the 
massive pedestal for the Cross, and the course of 
the narrative of the Passion is perpetually inter- 
rupted or illustrated by scenes from the older 



The Passion Play at Oberamrnergau. 77 

Bible, which are supposed to prefigure the next 
event to be represented on the stage. Thus, in 
Daisenbergers words, " The representation of 
the Passion is arranged and performed on the 
basis of the entire Scriptures." 

In order to explain the meaning af the typical 
tableaux and to prepare the audience for the scene 
which they are about to witness, recourse is had 
to an ingenious arrangement, whereby the inter- 
lude between each scene is filled up with singing 
in parts and in chorus by a choir of Schutzgeis- 
ter, or Guardian Angels. The choragus, or 
leader of the choir, first recites some verses clearly 
and impressively, then the choir bursts out into 
song accompanied by an orchestra concealed from 
view in front of the stage. The tinkle of a little 
bell is heard, and the singers draw back so as to 
reveal the tableaux. The curtain rises and the 
tableau is displayed, during which they sing again. 
The curtain falls, they resume their old places, and 
the singing proceeds. Then when they come to 
the end half file off to the right, half to the left, 
and the play proper begins. When the curtain 
falls, they again take their places and resume 
their song. The music is very simple but im- 



78 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

pressive, and the more frequently it is heard the 
more you feel its force and pathos. The chorus 
occupies the stage for fully half the time devoted 
to the piece. 

Their dress is very effective. From the chora- 
gus in the centre in bright scarlet, all wear coro- 
nets, with the cross in the centre, and are habited 
in a white under-tunic, with golden edging, in 
yellow leather sandals, and stockings of the same 
color as the robe which falls from their shoul- 
ders. These robes, held in place by gold decorated 
cords and tassels round the breast and round the 
waist, are arranged very artistically and produce 
a brilliant effect, especially when the wearers are 
leaving the stage by the wings. Twice, however, 
these brilliant robes are exchanged for black — 
immediately before and immediately after the 
Crucifixion. The bright robes, however, are re- 
sumed at the close, when the play closes with a 
burst of hallelujahs and a jubilant triumph over 
the Ascension of Our Lord. 

THE TABLEAUX. 

The first tableau is emblematic of the Fall. 
When the curtain is drawn up, Adam and Eve, 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. jg 

a man and woman of the village, habited very 
decently in white sheep-skin, are flying from the 
Garden of Eden, where stands the tree with the 
forbidden fruit, while from its branches hangs the 
Serpent, the Tempter. An Angel with a sword 
painted to look like flame forbids their return. 
After the choir have sung a stanza the curtain 
falls, they resume their places on the stage sing- 
ing how from afar from Calvary's heights gleams 
through the night the morning dawn. They go 
on singing, and after awhile the curtain is rung 
up again for the second tableau. This represents 
the Adoration of the Cross. A cross of wood 
planted on a rock occupies the centre of the 
stage. One girl stands with one hand round the 
Cross, the other holding a palm branch, while 
another kneels at its foot. Around are grouped 
fourteen smaller cherubs, charming little creatures, 
all standing or kneeling as motionless as if they 
had been hewn out of stone. The grace of the 
little ones is wonderful, and the grouping most 
natural. All point to or gaze at the Cross. 

When the curtain falls it does not rise upon 
another tableau until after the first scene has been 
presented and Christ has made his triumphal 



80 The Passion Play at ObcrammergaiL 

entry into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of the 
children. The third tableau, which comes imme- 
diately before the Sanhedrim meets to discuss 
how to destroy the Galilean, shows us the chil- 
dren of Jacob in the plain of Dothan conspiring 
how to kill Joseph, who, in his coat of many 
colors — in this case plain white with red facings or 
stripes — is approaching from behind. His breth- 
ren are leaning against the well into which they 
decide to fling their unfortunate victim. The 
chorus sing a verse emphasizing the parallel be- 
tween Joseph and Jesus. The common offence 
alleged against each is that he would make him- 
self a king to reign over us. 

After the meeting of the Sanhedrim there are 
two tableaux, both intended to foreshadow the 
departure of Christ for Bethany. The first, taken 
from the Apocrypha, and therefore unfamiliar 
to most English visitors, represents the departure 
of Tobias, who with his little dog takes leave of 
his parents before setting forth with the angel 
Raphael, who is in dress, with a stall instead of 
wings. The little dog stands as if stuffed, if, in- 
deed, it is not. All the human performers in the 
tableaux preserve the most perfect natural pose 



The Passion Play at Oberammergait. 81 

with inflexible immobility. I watched them 
closely, and never saw a finger shake in any of 
the tableaux. Only Isaac's eyes blinked as he 
lay on the altar of Mount Moriah, and one little 
child seated among the hundred who represent 
the Israelites bitten by the fiery serpents moved 
her eyes. With these two exceptions they might 
all have been modelled in ivory. 

After Tobias comes the tableau of the Bride 
in the Song of Solomon, who is lamenting her 
lost and absent bridegroom. She is gorgeously 
arrayed in the midst of a bevy of fair companions 
in the traditional flower garden, and while it is 
displayed the chorus sings a lament as ardent in 
its passion as the original in Canticles. Christ, 
of course, is prefigured by the absent bridegroom ; 
the lamenting bride, who appeals to the daughters 
of Jerusalem, is the Church, the Lamb's Bride 
of the Apocalypse. The comparison may be 
orthodox, but the contrast between the bride and 
her flower-surrounded companions and the almost 
intolerable pathos of the parting at Bethany, 
which immediately follows, is greater than that 
which exists elsewhere in the play. 

The sixth tableau, which is supposed to typify 



82 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

the doom of Jerusalem for the rejection of the 
Saviour, presents us with a picture of the Court 
of Ahasuerus at the moment when Vashti the 
Queen is falling before the wrath of her royal 
consort, who is welcoming Esther to the vacant 
throne. Judging from the tableaux, Ahasuerus 
could not be congratulated upon the change, 
Poor Vashti's beauty is all exposed to the assem- 
bled banqueters, but exposed in shame and dis- 
grace instead of being exhibited as the glory of 
her lord's harem. Her fate is declared by the 
chorus to foreshadow that of the Synagogue. 

The seventh and eighth tableaux foreshadow 
the Last Supper. Both are marvellous displays 
of artistic skill in grouping hundreds of persons 
in a comparatively small space. The first is the 
gathering of the manna in the wilderness ; the 
second the return of the spies from the Promised 
Land with a bunch of grapes so colossal as to 
cause two strong men to stagger beneath its 
weight. The whole of the stage is a mosaic of 
heads and hands. Four hundred persons, in- 
cluding 150 childern, are grouped in these two 
great living pictures, and so motionless are they 
that you might almost imagine that they were a 



The Passion Play at Oberammergati. 83 

group in colored marble. The tableaux are con- 
ventional enough. Moses has his two gilt rays 
like horns jutting out of his head, the manna 
falls from above upon the stage like snow in a 
theatrical winter piece, and there is no attempt 
to reduce the dimensions of the bunch of grapes 
to credible proportions. But these details of 
criticism are forgotten in admiration of the skill 
with which everyone, down to the smallest child, 
is placed just where he ought to be placed and 
does just what he ought to do, clad in the right 
color, and in harmonious relation to all his 
neighbors. The reference to the manna and to 
the land that flowed with milk and honey lead 
up to the institution of the Last Supper. 

The ninth tableau brings us back to Joseph, 
whose sale to the Midianites for twenty pieces 
of silver naturally leads up to Judas's bargain 
with the Sanhedrim for the betrayal of his Master 
for thirty. It was curious to recognize among 
the mute figures in the tableaux many of those 
who but a moment before had been active in the 
Sanhedrim. Such anachronisms, however, hardly 
call for more than a passing smile. 

The scene in the Garden of Gethsemane is 



84 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

heralded by a double tableau. The first, which 
is the tenth in order of tableaux, shows Adam 
under the curse; the second, Joab's treacherous 
assassination of Amasa. Adam, clad in a white 
sheep-skin, is represented as sweating and wea- 
ried by digging in ungrateful soil. Three of his 
small children are helping him to pull the thorns 
and briars from the earth, while Eve, apparently 
a young girl, with black hair, also skin-clad is 
the centre of a group of three very young chil- 
dren, while two in the background are playing 
with a stuffed lamb. The parallel is worked out 
by the choir between Adam's sweating and the 
bloody sweat in Gethsemane. 

The effective tableau which follows represents 
Joab making ready to smite Amasa under the 
fifth rib, while proffering him a friendly kiss. 
We here come upon several soldiers who do duty 
in the next scene as the guard who arrest Jesus. 
The tableau is remarkable, because as the chorus 
sings there comes an echo from the rocks within, 
where a concealed choir sing in response to the 
eager inquiry of the chorus, "What happened? 
What happened ?" describing the murder of 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 85 

Amasa, which, of course, needs no link to con- 
nect itself with the coming betrayal of Jesus. 

After the arrest of Christ comes the interval 
or pause for lunch. When the audience reassem- 
bles to witness the appearance of Christ before 
the high priest, the prefatory tableau — the twelfth 
of the series — show how Micaiah, the prophet 
of the Lord, was smitten by Zedekiah, the priest 
of Baal, for daring to predict, before Ahab and 
Jehosaphat, the approaching death of the King 
of Israel at the battle of Ramoth Gilead. The 
chorus sings several verses which lay stress upon 
the fact that if men speak out the truth, they 
must expect to be smitten in the face. The sing- 
ing is renderd with much force and effect. 

The thirteenth and fourteenth tableaux come 
before the appearance of Christ before Caiaphas. 
They represent the stoning ot Naboth, a vener- 
able old man who is being crushed beneath the 
missiles of Jezebel's sons of Belial, and the suf- 
ferings of Job, who is shown on his dunghill, 
scoffed at, plagued, and derided by his friends, his 
servants, and even by his wife. The chorus sing 
a series of verses about Job, all beginning with 
the German equivalent of Ecce Homo — "Seht 



86 The Passion Play at Obcramrnergau. 

Welch ein Mensch !" the phrase afterwards used 
by Pilate when displaying Christ to the people. 

The fifteenth tableau prefacing the despair of 
Judas represents the despair of Cain. Cain, a 
tall, dark, and stalwart man, clad in a leopard's 
skin, is dropping the heavy tree branch with 
which he has slain his brother, Abel, in a lamb- 
skin, lies dead with an ugly wound on his right 
temple. Cain's right hand is pressed upon the 
brow upon which is to be set the brand of God. 
It is a fine scene, full of simple, tragic effect. 

The sixteenth tableau, which precedes the ap- 
pearance of Christ before the tribunal of Pilate, 
the foreign ruler, is devoted to the scene in which 
Daniel was denounced before Darius immediately 
preceding his consignment to the den of lions. 
Daniel stands forth before the King undismayed 
by his accusers, a much more vigorous and lugged 
specimen of persecuted virtue than the Man of 
Sorrows, who immediately afterwards was led 
before Pilate. 

Tableau seventeenth, which prefigures the con- 
temptuous mockery of Christ by Herod, repre- 
sents Samson avenging himself upon the Philis- 
tines by pulling down the temple upon their 



The Passion Play at Oberammergaii. 87 

heads. The blinded giant strains at one of the 
two pillars on which the roof rests, breaking it 
asunder, and the company in their mirth wait in 
horror to see their impending doom. The paral- 
lel in this case is between the mocking of Samson 
and the jeers to which Christ was subjected, not 
to the vengeance of the former upon the Philis- 
tines. 

The eighteenth and nineteenth tableaux pre- 
cede the scourging. The former represents the 
bringing of Joseph's coat, all steeped in blood, t } 
the patriarch Jacob : the latter the sacrifice of 
Isaac. Joseph's coat is not very bloody. His 
father's distress is very vividly expressed. Isaac 
lies on Mount Moriah, a curly, black -headed 
youth — boy, or girl, it was difficult to make out 
— while Abraham, who is just about to slay him 
with a bright falchion, is restrained by an angel, 
who points to a ram in a thicket, which, although 
stuffed, looks as much alive as any of the human 
figures in the tableaux. 

The scene in which Christ is sentenced to 
death is prefaced by two tableaux, neither of 
them particularly appropriate. The first repre- 
sents Joseph acclaimed as Grand Vizier of Pha- 



88 The Passion Play at Oberammcrgau. 

raoh. The stage is filled with a bright spirited 
multitude of acclaiming beholders. The tableau 
is unquestionably vivid, but as a preface to the 
Death Sentence it is somewhat out of place. 
More appropriate, although scenically less telling, 
is the choice of the scapegoat, which is repre- 
sented as taking place in the temple, before an 
interested crowd of spectators. 

Two more tableaux bring us to the Crucifix- 
ion. The first represents Isaac carrying the 
wood with which he was to be burnt up the slope 
of Mount Moriah ; the second, another scene 
from the wilderness, full of spirit and life, shows 
Moses raising the brazen serpent on high so that 
all who look upon it may live even though they 
have been bitten by the fiery serpent. The stage 
is crowded with life. 

There used to be two additional tableaux, rep- 
resenting Jonah and the whale, and the passage 
of the children through the Red Sea. These 
tableaux, which preceded the Resurrection, have 
disappeared, reducing the total number from 
twenty-five to twenty-three. The most remarka- 
ble omission — regarded from the point of view 
of Scripture history — is the entire absence of 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 89 

David from the tableaux. There is no allusion 
to Solomon, or to the Conquest of Canaan, or to 
Isaiah, the Evangelical prophet. But within the 
compass of twenty-three pictures a really marvel- 
lous range of subjects is obtained, and all of 
them, whether appropriate or inappropriate ac- 
cording to our ideas, are worked out with mar- 
vellous care and presented with the most pains- 
taking fidelity on the part of all concerned. The 
gospel according to St. Daisenberger, as unfolded 
on the stage at Oberammergau, is his version of 
the story that transformed the world, and that 
will yet transform it again. It is the old, old 
story in a new, and, to Protestants, somewhat 
unfamiliar dress. It is as if the Gospel from the 
stained windows of our cathedrals had suddenly 
taken living bodily shapes and transacted itself 
once more before our astonished eyes. 

Wherein does it modify orthodox opinions? 
Chiefly in humanizing them, in making the Gos- 
pel story once more "palpitate with actuality," 
to quote the French phrase which Matthew Ar- 
nold loved to use. These people on the stage at 
Oberammergau are not lay figures, mere abstract 
representations of the virtues or the opposite, 



9O The Passion Play at Cberarnmergau. 

They live, breathe, and act just as if they were 
actors in a French or Russian novel. That is 
the great difference. These poor players have 
brought our Lord to life again. In their 
hands He is no mere influence or abstraction, no 
infinite and Almighty ruler of the universe. He 
may be, and no doubt every one of the Oberam- 
mergauers would shrink with horror from the 
suggestion that He was any other than, the Sec- 
ond Person of the Trinity. But they have done 
more than repeat the Athanasian Creed. They 
have shown how it came to be believable. If 
that poor Carpenter's Son, by getting Himself 
crucified as one part fool and three parts seditious 
adventurer, could revolutionize the world, then 
the influence seemed irresistible that He must 
have been divine. If the illegitimate son of a 
Bengalee peasant, hanged by order of the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor of the Northwest provinces 
because of the mischief he was making among 
the Moslems in Lahore, were to establish his 
faith on the ruins of Westminster Abbey, and in- 
stal the successor of his leading disciple on the 
throne of the British Empire, we should not 
wonder at the apotheosis, To do so much with 



The Passion Play at Obcramniergau. 91 

so little material compels the inference that 
there is the Infinite behind. Nothing but a God 
could control such a machine. It needed a ful- 
crum in Eternity to make such a change in the 
things of time with so weak a lever as the life of 
this Galilean. 

But it is not only Christ Himself who be- 
comes real to us, but, what is equally important, 
we see His contemporaries as they saw them- 
selves, or as He saw them. Caiaphas — who that 
has seen Burgomaster Lang in that leading role 
can feel anything but admiration and sympathy for 
the worthy Chief of the Sanhedrim ? — had every- 
thing on his side to justify him. Law, respecta- 
bility, patriotism, religious expediency, common- 
sense. Against him there w T as only this poor 
vagabond from Nazareth — and the Invisible! 
But Caiaphas, like other men, does not see the 
Invisible, and he acts, as according to his lights, he 
was bound to act. He is the great prototype of 
the domineering and intolerant ecclesiastic all the 
world over. Since the Crucifixion he has often 
changed his clothes, but at heart he is the same. 
He has worn the three-crowned hat of the suc- 
cessor of Peter ; he has paraded in archbishop's 



92 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

mitre; he has often worn the gown and bands of 
Presbyterian Geneva. Caiaphas is eternal. He 
reproduces himself in every church, in every 
village, because there is a latent Caiaphas in 
every heart. 

Perhaps the character who comes out best is 
Pilate. He is a noble Roman whose impartiality 
and rectitude, coupled with an anxious desire to 
take the line of least resistance, and find out 
some practical middle course, is worthy of that 
imperial race, to whose vices, as well as to many 
of their virtues, we English have succeeded. 
Pilate did his best to save Jesus — up to a certain 
point. Beyond that point he did not go, and, 
according to the accepted ethics of men in his 
position, it would have been madness to have 
gone. Why should he, Pontius Pilate, Procura- 
tor of Judaea, risk his career and endanger the 
tranquillity of Jerusalem merely to save a poor 
wretch like that Galilean ! What Englishman 
who has ever ruled a province in India, where 
religious ferment was rife, would not have felt 
tempted to act as Pilate acted — nay, would not 
have acted as he acted without even the hesita- 
tion he showed, if the life of some poor wanderer 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 93 

stood between him and the peace of the Empire? 
To the last, Pilate never made himself the will- 
ing instrument of popular frenzy. He argued 
against, he denounced it, he resorted to every 
subterfuge by which he could save the prisoner's 
life, and it was only when the Sanhedrim threat- 
ened to denounce him to Caesar that he unwill- 
ingly gave way. 

Another person who comes out better than 
might be expected is Judas. The conception of 
his character is very fine and very human. Judas, 
as the treasurer of the little band, naturally felt 
indignant at the apparent wanton extravagance 
which led Mary Magdalene to pour ointment 
worth 300 pence upon the head of her Master, 
There is real human nature and sound practical 
common sense in his rely to those who told him 
not to worry about the money, when he retorted, 
Who is there tot ake care about it if I don't ? 
Judas never from first to last really meditates be- 
traying his Master to death. The salves which 
he lays to his conscience when consenting to iden- 
tify Jesus at night are very ingenious. Judas 
was a smart man who calculated he stood to win 



94 The Passion Play at Oberammcrgan. 

in any event. He got the indispensable cash ; 
all that he did was to indicate what could perfectly 
well have been discovered without his aid ; if 
Jesus were what he believed him to be, he could 
easily baffle His enemies ; if he were not, well, 
then he had deceived them. But the moment 
Judas learns that he has really endangered his 
Master's life, his whole demeanor changes. He 
flings back the blood-money at the feet of those 
who had given it him, and, in the madness of 
despair he hangs himself. So far from Judas being 
callous to Christ's fate, his suicide was a proof that 
his penitence was far more agonizing than that of 
Peter. To hang yourself is one of the severest 
proofs of the sincerity of your sorrow. One who 
had no conscience, or one incapable of intense 
feeling, would not have acted as Judas did. 

Simon Peter also comes in for a share in the 
general rehabilitation. It was impossible not to 
feel sympathy for the hasty old man, hustled from 
side to side by a pack of violent soldiery. Know- 
ing, moreover, that he had cut off one of their 
ears but a few hours before, and that if they rec- 
ognized him, his own ears would be cropped, 



The Passion Ptay at Ob c rammer gatt. 95 

even if he did not share the fate of the Crucified, 
his denial is so natural under the circumstances, 
that you cease to marvel that even the cock-crow 
on the roof failed to remind him of his Master's 
warning. 

The Passion Play has at least done this — it sets 
us discussing the conduct of Caiaphas and Pilate 
and Judas, as if they were our contemporaries, as if 
they were statesmen. And this, no doubt, is no 
small service, for these men are types of human 
character, who are eternally re-embodied amongst 
us. 

It is easy to recognize the traditional and con- 
ventional Christ who lived and was crucified in 
the centuries long since departed. It is another 
thing to identify Him to-day in the causes which 
He inspires, and in the great movements which 
are the Gesta Christi of our time. The Christ is 
ever in the front. It is as easy to be Christian 
when Christianity is triumphant as it is to be wise 
after the event. 

For Humanity sweeps onward! 

Where to-day the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas 

With the silver in his hands; 



96 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

Far in front the cross stands ready, 
And the crackling faggots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday 
In silent awe return, 

To glean up the scattered ashes into 
History's golden urn. 

Thus the whole drama of contemporary history 
lives once again in these old-world figures. The 
faces under the head-dresses are continually chang- 
ing, but the spirit is the same. And only in pro- 
portion as I identify these types with the men 
and causes in the midst of which we live and 
struggle from day to day does the battle of life 
have much zest or meaning for me. 

Leaving Oberammergau, I returned by Swit- 
zerland to London. At Lucerne, while waiting 
for the train, I turned over the book in the con- 
struction of the Gotthard railway. About one 
thousand tons of dynamite, it is said, had sufficed 
when scientifically applied to pierce the tunnels 
through the mountain barrier that separated Italy 
from Switzerland. Blasting powder could never 
have done the work. It helped to level the 
military roads for the legions of Suwarrow. It 
needed dynamite to tunnel the St. Gotthard — 



The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 97 

dynamite directed by science ; and as I read this I 
fell a thinking. That old story, that mediaeval 
artistic Christ in magenta and pearl gray, with His 
disciples in artistic symphonies of harmonious and 
contrasted color, no doubt transformed the world. 
But a new world has arisen which sorely needs 
transforming again. And is it not possible that 
the conventional Christ who no doubt did mighty 
things in His time, may have become as obsolete 
as blasting powder ? May we not hope that if 
the conventional Christ did so much, the real 
Christ may do much more ? — that the realization 
of the Christ as He actually lived and died 
amongst us may be as much superior in its trans- 
forming efficacy as the dynamite of the modern 
engineer is to the powder sack of the old soldiers 
who marched under Suwarrow? Of one thing 
we may at least be certain, and that is, that if 
every one of those who call themselves by the 
Christian name would but say one Christ-like 
word, or do one Christ-like deed, between every 
sunrise and sunset, it would lift a very Alpine 
mass of sorrow and anxiety from the weary heart 
of the world, What, then, might not be done 
if in very truth with all sincerity we each of us 



98 The Passion Play at Oberammergau. 

tried to be a real Christ in his or her own sphere, 
the Sent of God to those in the midst of whom 
we pass our lives ? 

One word more and I have done. I have spoken 
of the endless shifting of features under the same 
mitre, In this also Oberammergau supplies a 
timely lesson. The actors play different parts as 
they grow old. They begin with being children 
in the tableaux, and they pass in turn from one 
role to another. The Judas of this year was the 
Apostle John of 1880. The Apostle John of to- 
day will probably be the Christ of 1900. When 
the Christ was selected in 1870, he was chosen 
out of four competitors. One of the unsuccess- 
ful to-day plays King Herod, the other Pontius 
Pilate. So is it ever in real life. Few indeed 
are those who are always Christs. When Chris- 
tians ceased to be martyrs they martyred their 
enemies. The Church came from the catacombs 
to establish the Inquisition. The Puritan fathers 
who crossed the Atlantic to find freedom to wor- 
ship God, no sooner found themselves at home 
in the wilderness than they persecuted the Quakers 
as relentlessly as they themselves had been perse- 
cuted by the Stuarts. It is with individuals as it 



The Passion Play at Obcrammergau. 99 

is with Churches, In our own lives we may 
be Christs to-day and atheists to-morrow. Power 
and opportunity destroy more Christs than the 
dungeon and the stake. And perhaps one reason 
why the Oberammergauers have been able to 
give us the Christ we see this year, is because in 
their secluded valley they have remained poor and 
humble in spirit, and have never forgotten the 
story that transformed the world. 



THE END. 



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